Nightmares
by Jaenelle Angelline
Summary: Logan and Jubes both have nighmares, and seek comfort from each other. FINISHED. This summary stinks, story's better. Read, review please! Thanks!


Nightmares

Author's Note:

"…Waking up at night

With the sheets soaking wet

And a freight train running

Through the middle of my head…"

A stray line from a Bruce Springsteen song inspired this fic. They were playing this song over the supermarket intercom the last time I went grocery shopping, and when the line actually penetrated my brain I was staring at a carton of Cherries Jubilee ice cream and wondering if I could spare the money to buy it. I didn't get the ice cream, but my mind made one of those crazy leaps and connected the line with the word Jubilee and this was what came out of it. Enjoy!---Jaenelle

_On the table…lying strapped down, immobile…people, men, wearing doctors' white coats surrounding the table. Hands everywhere…probing, feeling…Sharp pains as the needles and various other objects slid under skin, intruded in bodily orifices, causing pain and acute discomfort. Pain sharpened, worsened, and screams filled the room, screams that went ignored by the doctors, who were only concentrating on what they wanted from their helpless victim…_

_The scene shifted. Footsteps pounded on dry, dusty ground, beating out an unsteady running cadence. Eyes scanning the horizon, all the senses straining to find the person being sought, the one person who, of everyone else in the world, meant home. Somewhere out there, somewhere ahead, in the trackless desert, home was waiting. But suddenly there was a burst of red light, a scream of terror and pain, and suddenly out of the swirling desert dust appeared a tall male figure, silver-haired, dark-clad, his face full of a cold triumph. And at his feet lay the ashes of home, the death of his heart, the end of a life that had been cherished, nurtured, cared about so deep that the hurt would never go away. Bastion had her, had had her all the time, and Logan ran to the limp figure, heedless of the tears that streaked his face as he lifted the bruised, battered body in his arms. "Jubilee…" he moaned, his voice hoarse. "Jubilee, no, don't, come back, darlin', please, I need ya…" Her eyes opened, and looked up, blinked, focused on him. Then changed. "Logan, look out!" And suddenly, he had the sensation of falling…and his last thought was of…_

"JUBILEE!"

Logan's eyes flew open, pupils dilated with the remainder of his nightmare-induced berserker rage and panic, thrashing as he tried to free himself from the bedsheets wrapped around him. Intense blue eyes met his own brown ones, and a soft, gentle voice said, "I'm right here, Wolvie. Right here. Not going anywhere. You don't hafta shout. No, don't pop your claws…you know how Jean and 'Ro hate it when you shred another set of sheets…" Gentle hands fluttered around him, tugging sheets out from under him, and he lay still for a moment as the freight train of his nightmare ran through the middle of his head and out of his mind. It took a few moments for him to pick up the feeling of wet stickiness from the sheets under him, and he realized he'd soaked the sheets with sweat. He didn't really register it, though; with the adrenaline rush had come a single-minded, almost tunnel-vision-like focus on Jubilee.

"Geez, Wolvie," that gentle voice said again. "You're, like, sweating buckets…eew. Come on, let's get you showered." Still breathing hard, lost in panic from the dream, he fastened his eyes on her, drank in her face, her form, her scent, as she helped him stand and guided him to the small bathroom across the hall from his room. He paused there, staring at her, but she gently but firmly pushed him into the bathroom. "I'm right here, nothing's happened to me. Nothing's going to happen to me. We're home, we're safe. Wash all that sweat off you while I change your sheets." Still, he stood there, staring at her. She was all right. She was her. Bastion was long gone. Had been gone for a while. She had survived. He had survived. They had found each other again. With her, he was… "…home."

Jubilee misunderstood. "Yes, Wolvie, we're home. We're not in New Mexico anymore. It's been over for a long time. I'm here. I'm not going anywhere except to the hall closet to get another set of bedsheets. You just had a nightmare. That's all. Let me change your bed while you get cleaned up." She tugged the doorknob out of his hand and closed the door firmly. After a long moment, he slid out of his boxers, his eyes still glued to the door. He stepped into the shower, turned on the hot water…with his eyes still glued to the door. He soaped up with a washcloth with his eyes still glued to the door. He rinsed with his eyes still glued to the door. When he stepped out and grabbed the towel, he was still watching the door. When Jubilee cracked the door open a tiny bit to check on him, the first thing she saw was his single-minded, intense gaze. She smiled gently and dropped a pair of his boxers in his hand. "Put those on, Wolvie. And come to bed." He dropped the towel to put the boxers on; she turned bright pink and hurriedly closed the door. He yanked the boxers on, not caring whether they were backwards or not, and yanked the door open. Across the hall, he could see the warm yellow lamplight spilling from his open room door. Inside, Jubilee was humming quietly as she tucked the corners of the flat sheet under the end of his mattress and opened the folded comforter over the flat sheet.

She turned when he stepped into the room, his eyes glued to her. She smiled gently and took his arm, feeling his hand grip hers tightly, as if for reassurance. Steering him toward the bed, she sat him down on the edge of it, where she'd turned one corner down, and then pushed him backwards onto the freshly-changed pillow. He flicked a glance sideways at the pillow, looked back at her, then frowned as he looked back at the pillow again.

Jubilee chuckled wryly. "There weren't any solid-colored sheets in the closet, Wolvie, I had to make the bed with a set of flowered sheets. I'll wash your bedding tomorrow. This is just for tonight." He stopped frowning and looked back at her. "There we go. All set." She brushed a stray lock of still-damp hair away from his forehead and tried to stand, heading for her own bedroom.

She was brought up short by his hand still gripping hers. When Jubilee turned to look at him, he was still watching her, and his hand refused to let hers go. A lump rose in her throat and she sat on the edge of the bed again, her other hand coming up to touch his. "All right, Wolvie. I'll stay here for the night." He nodded mutely, closing his eyes…but his grip never relaxed.

Jubilee sighed as she made herself comfortable on the edge of the bed. She both loved and hated these nightmares Logan had; loved them, because they gave her an excuse to fuss; hated them because of what they did to him. He'd wake up, sweating and shaking, far gone in the berserk rage that scared the hell out of the other X-Men but to her was just another aspect of his personality. He rarely ever spoke while he was in that state; with his feral side in control, human words became something of a struggle. His eyes, his face, his body language spoke for him. She'd learned to read him from those visual clues.

This nightmare must have been about her. She'd been passing his room door on her way to the kitchen for a late-night snack when she heard him cry out, an incoherent word. She'd peeked in and saw him tossing and turning on the bed, his head jerking back and forth. She'd tiptoed in to try and wake him up when he'd given a convulsive roll that landed him on the floor, tangled in his sheets, and cried her name in tones of grief and pain. She'd seen panic and loss and emptiness in his eyes when they opened, and not knowing how else to help, she'd set about getting him untangled and cleaned up.

His hand relaxed in hers, though she felt it would tighten again if she tried to withdraw her hand. Sighing to herself, she stretched herself out alongside his body, pulling the end of the blankets up to cover her flannel-pj'd legs. He grumbled something irritably in his sleep and tugged at the covers, then abandoned it and curled up on his side, away from her, releasing her hand completely. But he was warm, and the bed was comfortable, and Jubilee's eyelids closed as she drifted off to dreamland…

_On a table…cold metal against hot skin, sweaty from the futile struggling…feet planted in stirrups, a grotesque parody of a regular doctor's office. But this was no doctor's office; knees and thighs were strapped firmly apart, opening sensitive, delicate untouched flesh to the dirty, suggestive stares that boded no good. Screams erupted from a dry, raw throat as hands and other things touched, probed, intruded, causing pain and mental anguish as limbs thrashed, trying desperately to escape. Broken pleas for mercy, for respite, for help, went unheeded, and the pain went on and on, choking her until she was sick of it, and it seemed like it was never going to end…_

_And suddenly she was free, watching the sun, the sun she hadn't seen in a month, set over the stark, bleak desert horizon. Somewhere out there was salvation, salvation in the form of a short, hairy dude with a bad-attitude who loved her as fiercely as she loved him, who was the embodiment of home, safety, love. She had to find her salvation. Choppy, unsteady, fatigue-laden running strides gave way to slow, stubborn steps, the world narrowing to the iron-willed determination to put one foot in front of the other, and to keep going like that until she found him. But suddenly the shape looming out of the shadows turned into a violet-colored Sentinel, and then swirled into the form of Bastion, and she brought her arms up in an involuntarily defensive gesture, too exhausted to produce the pyrotechnics that gave her her name. All she could do was cower and wait for death, which came in the form of an impact against her cringing body, promising to blot out the light for the last time, and all she could do was beg…_

"Please…"

Logan snapped awake from a blessedly dreamless sleep, and rolled over at the sound of the muffled _thump_ and that whispered word. The adrenaline high from his nightmare-induced berserker rage had faded to a tolerable level, but it threatened to spike again as he smelled the fear sweat on Jubilee and heard her whispered plea. Even as he rolled over, his rational mind told him they were at the mansion, there was nothing threatening them, and Jubilee had just fallen off his bed. And he rolled over, looked over the edge, and saw Jubilee curled in a fetal position, tears streaming down her cheeks from tightly-shut eyes. "Please…" the word was repeated again, in a voice barely above a whisper.

He got out of bed, hovering protectively over her, brushed a hand over her forehead and smoothed the tousled black locks. Just once. When she didn't wake up from that gentle caress, he did it again. The third time he did it, her eyes popped open. When he looked into them, they were huge pools of pain and pleading, remnants of the nightmare she'd had. Wordlessly, he gathered her up in his arms as he settled to a sitting position on the floor, stroking her hair and making nonsensical, meaningless, comforting noises as he rocked her. She hugged him back, tightly, offering comfort while at the same time seeking it. They sat like that for a long time, neither one speaking. Logan rocked, Jubilee hugged, each comforting one another in a way that no one else would ever understand. When sleep finally spread its blanket over them, in the wee small hours of the morning, they both climbed into Logan's bed together, she curling into his arms in a purely platonic but indescribably sensual way. She was almost the same height as he was, now, and they fit together like two spoons.

Happy with each other's presence, they snuggled together and slipped into dreamland together, where he was her knight in shining armor and their mutual love made them each invincible.


End file.
